… it’s a little warm out there.
(For those of you in the US, 32C is 89.6F, and 37C is 98.6)
So…
Bonus critters, or “I think the kittens should stay outside longer.”
I headed outside to start rounding the kittens up and close them in the sun room for the night.
The kittens were all over the place, including in and out of the sun room.
Something, however, seemed odd.
It was getting dark, but the shadows seemed… darker, somehow.
Plus, something had the kittens’ attention.
Then they moved.
Not one, but 2!! skunks were in the sun room, eating cat kibble.
These two are smaller than the one that would visit us last year, and they have less white on them.
When I was first trying to figure out what I was seeing in the dark (I was able to lighten the photo up, so the skunks are more visible in the photo than they were in real life), there were a couple of kittens sharing the kibble with them.
All of the cats that were around showed only a mild curiousity about our visitors, and had no problem being near them. Likewise, the skunks had no real issue with the cats. They mostly ignored the cats, and only seemed to have a problem when there were too many kitties in the doorway.
We waited a while before putting the kittens away for the night! :-D
Both of the skunks went into the old kitchen. I kept watch from the side windows and saw one as it left, but where was the other? I saw it come to the window near me, go under the couch on the other side of the sun room, wander back into the old kitchen and out again, disappearing several times in the process.
After a while, I went to the old kitchen from the inside, making sure to rattle the door knob a bit and turning the light on, before opening the door. I saw no critters, so I went in and turned the light on in the sun room and started looking under things from the doorway before coming in.
Then I heard some noises on the other side of the freezer I was standing next too.
Sure enough, the skunk had gone behind the freezer, and I could just see its tail as it came out the other end and made it’s away through things to the other side of the room.
By the time we did get everything shut down for the night, I was still only about 95% sure the skunk was no longer in the old kitchen! (yes, it turned out to be gone)
They are such adorable critters. They are likely what is digging the holes I’m finding all over the yard lately. Dozens of tiny holes in groups around the yard, so I’m thinking there’s a fair few more than just these two! With the state of the lawn, I’m not too concerned about any damage they are doing, which is minimal to begin with. I rather like that they are eating grubs, which are probably worse for the lawn than their leaving little turf balls all over the place. :-)
I would really love to pet a skunk some day. :-D
The Re-Farmer
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Good Bye, Little Guy!
This evening was both exciting and sad.
The family that had come to look at the kittens a few days ago called back today. They had made a decision and asked if they could come by to pick up their new fur baby.
Zesty Nacho Blast had to be awakened from a nap by his new humans!
He is now at his new home, with his new human family, where he will have new animal companions and even a new name.
Happy to see him adopted by a good family.
But we are going to miss him, too!
The Re-Farmer
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Location, location, location!
Location makes all the difference.
Even if you’re a chokecherry tree.
While picking a few more raspberries, I noticed some significant differences in the nearby chokecherry tree, compared to last year. Specifically, the ripening berries are already larger than the fully ripe berries I’d picked from this tree last year.
This location is closer to the house, where it gets shaded for much of the day by nearby spruce trees and the maple grove. Last year, I pruned this tree back and, thanks to my watering the transplanted raspberries, it got watered along with them.
I decided to check out the other two chokecherry trees among the lilacs that run along the north fence, where they (the lilacs) do a bang-up job keeping out the dust from cars passing by on the gravel road.
There are not a lot of berries on this one that I could see, and they are mostly very green; I made a point of getting a picture of the reddest ones I could find. These berries are quite a bit smaller than the tree closer to the house, though I’d say they are the same size as last year.
This tree is mostly hidden by lilac bushes, with a few branches leaning over where I mow. No watering happens this far from the house, other than what nature provides, and there has been no clean up or pruning of any kind. This tree is also in the section bordered to the south by a row of trees that was self-sown when my mother had raspberry bushes there. She transplanted the raspberries, but left the trees, splitting up a section of the old garden. The last time it was plowed, there was some attempt to plow along the north side of the trees, too, but with the trees there, that area is unusable for gardening.
She is not understanding why I see them and their location as a problem.
While this tree does get a lot of sun, that row of self-sown trees is large enough that, at certain times of day, they do shade it a bit. This is also near the end of the row of lilacs. After that, there are mature elms along the fence line that shade the area in the evening.
There is another chokecherry tree among the lilacs, and when I got to it, I found quite a surprise.
This tree has massive amounts of almost ripe berries!
Like the other tree among the lilacs, the only watering it’s been getting has been whatever rain we’ve had, and there has been zero pruning or clean up. The main difference is that there are no tall trees to shade it; just the lilacs it is growing with. Which means it gets full sun almost from sunrise to sunset. This time of year, I’d say about 9 or 10 hours of full sun a day, plus maybe 1 1/2 – 2 hours of non-direct light.
I would say the berries are about the same size as last year, though they are slightly bigger than the other one among the lilacs.
Earlier today, I was able to acquire a starter kit of equipment to start brewing mead. In looking up recipes, I’m excited to try some combinations. We’re already going to be using honey locally produced by my cousin. Some of the recipes include fruit and berries. I look forward to trying it out using our own sour cherries and chokecherries. Over time, we could also try it with raspberries (we won’t have enough this year) or Saskatoon berries (I think we’ll have to start over with new trees, though), haskap and other types of fruits and berries we will be growing as time goes by.
I think our first batch will be plain honey mead, as we learn the ropes, but I will be freezing cherries and chokecherries as we gather them (freezing helps with the release of natural sugars) to use in later batches.
I’m pretty excited about trying this out!!
Meanwhile…
Seeing how the same type of tree is doing in three different locations is giving me good information for when we are ready to plant other types of fruit, berry and nut trees around the property.
It’s all about location!
The Re-Farmer
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Critter of the Day: this one’s easy
It may be hard to tell a downy from a hairy woodpecker, but there is no mistaking these guys!
It’s a fairly rare treat for a pileated woodpecker to come visit. Not only do they have a very distinctive red head, but they are much larger than our usual visitors. At one point, I could see him tearing pieces of this tree’s bark off and tossing it down to the ground! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woodpecker do that before!
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Long day and, aquarium status
Bonus Critter: hello, down there
The little hairy bean loves climbing to the top of the king size mattress.
Hello, little David. What lovely eyes you have!
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Critter(s) of the Day: jungle kitties!
The kittens are enjoying the cherry trees and lilac bushes on the East side of the house. :-D
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Big garden area, progress
Today, my daughter and I got some progress done on the old garden area that we mulched with straw this spring.
We didn’t put anything under it, so things did start growing through it.
This is taken from one corner, next to the gooseberry bush and raspberries.
It looks a lot worse than it is. Partly because some of the weeds are so big, they take up more space on the surface than what they take up through the mulch. Partly because the mulch itself had seeds in it, and we’ve got oats growing in there, now.
We wanted to cover it, but first, we needed to kill this stuff.
Yes, we used herbicide on it. No, I’m not the least bit bothered by that.
Before we started, we tried to set up a hose to wash up later – and to spray any kittens who might come too close.
I’ve had some problems with the hoses. We’re down to two again, despite my repairs to them. There is, however, a garden tap. Basically, it’s a tap at the garden with a pipe running to the house, then a section of hose that can be screwed on to the water tap at the rear of the house. We’d never needed to test it out last year, so this was a good time to do it!
Yeah. That’s water spraying out of the ground, next to one of the wood piles.
I tried turning on the garden tap itself. Some water did start to come out, which turned really brown, then stopped altogether.
So I tried hooking up a pair of shorter hoses to the house tap, instead. One of them was spraying like crazy at the tap. When I switched to the other hose, it was fine.
So… we were down to one hose. *sigh*
While my daughter sprayed the garden, I worked on taking the pieces of wire that sewed the two sheets of black tarp together, out.
There was quite a lot of it. Some of the pieces were quite long and were done in a running stitch. On one section, there were two pieces used to created a double running stitch!
Getting it out was a challenge.
The kittens were very interested in the tarps!
After I got the wire out – and got scissors to cut away the fraying pieces that were catching on everything, I was able to spread them both out.
When the spraying was done, we left this area for a while, and I went back to working on cleaning around the old wood pile. After hauling another wheel barrow load to the pile near the burn barrel, I took a side trip into the barn, where I’d seen some tarps. The two black tarps are big, but not big enough!
While moving things to be able to access on of the tarps. I took a closer look at the old hoses that were in the way, and decided to try one of them out.
Much to my shock, it works just fine! No leaks or cracks, even though it’s really stiff from being in the barn for who knows how long.
So, we are back to two hoses. :-D
Later, my daughter and I spread the two black tarps over as much of the mulched area we could cover, while still making sure there is overlap. Then we checked out the two rolled up tarps I’d found in the barn.
One turned out to be an insulated tarp. We weren’t going to use that, even if it weren’t too small. We’ll save it for something else.
It turned out to be really huge!
Plus, it has grommets, so we can use tent pegs to pin it down.
We started to do that, but the ground is so hard, we actually bent some of the pegs.
Then, we had a visitor. A mom and her daughters came to look at the kittens to potentially adopt one. They stayed and played with the kittens, and took some pictures, for quite a while. I learned they got our phone number from the vet in town.
I had gone to the vet this morning, with updated pictures of the kittens, and little write-ups about each one, printed out. This family had actually phoned this clinic, asking about kittens, since they are also a shelter, and were given our number.
They will think about which one they will take and get back to us in about a week.
At least I hope so. I’d hate to get ghosted again. :-(
By the time they left, all the aches and pains were kicking in, and I had definitely overdone it on my broken toe, so I didn’t go back to get pictures of the tarps on the garden area, nor get back to working on the wood pile area.
It’ll be at least a day before I get back to it, since we’ll be doing our monthly shop in the city tomorrow. I’ll also be picking up a 5 kilo bucket of liquid honey I ordered yesterday, before we head out. My daughter is wanting to try her hand at making mead. :-)
Until then, it’s time to shower off the bus spray and herbicide, pain killer up and go to bed early!
The Re-Farmer
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Clean Up: old wood pile area, a bit of progress
I didn’t get as much done cleaning up in the old wood pile as I’d hoped, but a little is better than none!
This is most of the area I focused on today. I got more old pallets out, and a bit more rotten wood. For the most part, it’s too rotten to even pick up, but I’m hoping to at least get out the pieces with nails. I also cleared out some saplings that were in the wood pile my sister and her husband had made in the big garden, the summer before we moved out.
Most of the pile in the foreground is what I’d move there last year. I had intended to find uses for it, but I have access to better types of wood than I knew of back then, so I will be adding it to the chipping pile. I’ve got cherry wood set aside, and I have more than enough to work on, so any more cherry I take down is going to the chipping pile, too. There is still some apple wood I’d set aside by the old dog house. I’ll see what condition it’s in as I move it, before I make any decisions about it.
The pile of debris is growing, and I’m at a loss as to what to do with it. With the possibility of nails being in there, I can’t compost it, but there is so much soil in there, I just don’t think it’ll burn well.
I think, after I clean up more around the outhouse, I’ll spread it in the back. There is an access to the pit under the outhouse there, so it can be emptied as needed, so it should be kept open and clear. It’s not an area that will get traffic, to the risks of people finding nails is lower, and we certainly won’t be gardening or anything back there.
That’s one possibility, anyhow.
I did find a few things while moving pallets out.
A bent piece of sheet metal, two electrical insulators, and a perfectly intact tea cup – not even a chip on it! – buried under the pallet fence.
Weird!
In between working on this, we got some progress on the garden area we mulched, and had some company, but I will write about that in my next post. :-)
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 